In Hurricane Irene's aftermath, much praise, but a few heart-felt complaints as well in N.J.

It was a storm like no other in modern state history, causing the worst flooding in generations and claiming the lives of a dozen New Jerseyans.

As the cleanup from Hurricane Irene got under way last week, The Star-Ledger asked residents, officials and experts to rate the storm response at all levels, from state and local government to utilities to NJ Transit.

Despite the widespread damage, the early assessments are mostly positive, with a few glaring exceptions.

The emptying of the Jersey Shore ahead of Irene’s arrival — the biggest evacuation in state history, according to the state Office of Emergency Management — went smoothly and was roundly applauded even though the coast sustained far less damage than expected.

Utilities, particularly Jersey Central Power & Light, evoked a different response. Municipal officials and residents complained the company had too few crews on hand to deal with a storm everyone knew was coming.

One common frustration emerged in devastated river communities, where residents said their pleas for better flood-control measures have been largely ignored.

Gov. Chris Christie on Friday said the state will begin its own detailed assessment of the storm response this week. Calling the flooding the worst in more than a century, Christie said New Jersey was as prepared as it could be for Irene.

"The thing I liked the most is we decided to communicate," Christie said. "We communicated it clearly and repetitively and people listened."

PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE

The warnings rang out like alarm bells.

With his directive to "get the hell off the beach," Christie — along with state, county and local officials — marshaled the evacuation of a million residents and tourists from the Jersey Shore as Irene advanced up the coast.

To dissuade storm-watchers and to open a path for emergency vehicles, officials closed the Garden State Parkway South at Exit 98, Route 195 eastbound and a handful of other beach-bound roads. Before the first drop of rain fell, 2,000 members of the New Jersey National Guard were summoned for duty.

The orders were part of a carefully choreographed response run out of the State Police operations center in West Trenton, a communication hub linking state personnel with county and local officials.

Mayors say the arrangement worked well.

Bound Brook emergency officials, for instance, determined their two high-water vehicles would not be enough in the face of widespread flooding.

"We put our request in through Somerset County, who put it through the state, and within hours we had high-water vehicles," Bound Brook Mayor Carey Pilato said.

In town after town, evacuation orders went out ahead of time, based on information received from the National Weather Service or the emergency management chain of command.

In Fairfield, workers laid out sandbags and shut down Route 46 in anticipation of flooding. Mayor James Gasparini ordered the town emptied.

"I told everybody, ‘I’m going to look like an idiot if I pushed the panic button too fast,’ " Gasparini said. "That would have been fine by me, if I had been wrong."

He wasn’t. The flooding that hit Fairfield Monday was the worst many had ever seen.

In other communities — among them Wayne, Woodbridge and hard-hit Monroe — some residents said warnings to clear out arrived late.

Wayne resident Mirsad Sabani said he received a reverse 911 call warning of flooding after the flooding already hit.

In one errant move caught on video and posted to YouTube, where it went viral, two National Guard trucks motored into deep floodwaters in Manville — and kept going even as water reached the roof. All inside were rescued. The National Guard is conducting an inquiry into the incident.

"At the end of the day, 2,000 citizen-soldiers transitioned into uniform on Friday not knowing what was going to happen to their homes but willing to go out there to the community and help others," said Maj. Gen. Glenn K. Rieth, the Guard’s adjutant general. "It was a herculean effort."

UTILITIES

Flood-soaked belongings created by Hurricane Irene begin to pile up along Manville streetsIt's been two days since Hurricane Irene past through New Jersey, but her memory remains. Most of the flood waters have receded from the streets of Manville and residents are back in their homes to begin the process of removing their destroyed belongings. Tons of water-soaked building materials and personal items are piling up along the curbside waiting to be removed. (Video by Andre Malok / The Star-Ledger)

Like few storms before it, Irene exposed the fragility of the power grid, a vast web of wires susceptible to wind, tree and flood damage. In the aftermath, the storm also showed how long it can take utilities to patch that network back together.

More than 1.5 million homes and businesses in New Jersey went dark during or after the storm. It took nearly a week to restore electricity to many customers, eliciting fury from those on the back end of the process.

"In other storms, we’ve seen tons of trucks around," said Laraine Barach, a JCP&L customer from Short Hills. "There is no one out there getting it done. Why should they give us good service when they’re making so much money giving us poor service? And only the state can get after them."

In Belmar, where many businesses were still without electricity going into the Labor Day weekend, Mayor Matthew Doherty complained utilities needed more manpower.

"It seems as though, from our experience, the line personnel, the people in the trucks, are doing a great job when they get to their locations. But there’s not enough of them," Doherty said. "The state is allowing power companies that have a monopoly to operate with less personnel."

JCP&L spokesman Ron Morano sought to put the damage in context, saying crews had responded to more than 13,000 instances of downed wires, some with trees atop them, and had restrung more than 40 miles of wiring overall. In addition, he said, 360 poles needed to be replaced, and at least four substations flooded.

Before substations can become operational again, they must be painstakingly cleaned, each circuit hand-dried, Public Service Electric & Gas President Ralph LaRossa said.

"This is like water flooding your basement and it fills up your power box," he said.

All the state’s utilities will face a final accounting from the state Board of Public Utilities, which intends to review the response to Irene, BPU President Lee Solomon said.

"We will, at the end of this process, take a look at how they all conducted themselves during this crisis," he said.

RAILS AND ROADS

NJ Transit decided to suspend all rail service and pull its trains off the tracks well before Irene’s arrival.

"We don’t want to lose any equipment. We don’t want to put people at risk," executive director Jim Weinstein said.

Shutting down all service at noon Saturday cost NJ Transit money and inconvenienced hundreds of thousands of passengers. The agency wasn’t able to offer modified rail service until Tuesday, and the majority of trains didn’t run until Wednesday.

But Weinstein said the complete shutdown was the right decision considering hundreds of trees fell onto tracks, sinkholes opened and some stations flooded. Given the potential for even more damage had the agency left trains exposed to the elements, the executive director said, "I think we did a damn good job."

Many passengers were sympathetic. "All things considered, I think they did the best they could," said Tom Calabria, who rides the Northeast Corridor Line.

Irene also crippled many of the state’s major roadways.

There were 350 full or partial road closures on Sunday, according to the state Department of Transportation. That number was down to 36 by Tuesday as water receded and fallen trees were removed.

The DOT earned high marks for how fast it reopened the northbound lanes of Interstate 287 after the raging Rockaway River cut into the highway embankment in Boonton, washing away the shoulder and threatening to undermine the traffic lanes. A quartet of contractors worked overnight Wednesday into Thursday morning to shore up the road with rocks.

"I think they did a good job in quick fashion," said Andy Muldowney, a civil engineer in the Parsippany office of the engineering and architectural firm RBA Group. "I was surprised at how quick it was done."

Thanks to the early evacuation orders, nearly all of Cape May and most of coastal Atlantic, Ocean and Monmouth counties were uncharacteristically empty when Irene hit. When residents returned home, they found relatively minimal damage. Spring Lake lost nearly half of its 2-mile boardwalk to the surging water. Atlantic City’s casinos shut down for days, losing tourist and gambling dollars. Other Shore towns had some flooding, beach erosion and wind damage.

Neptune Township Mayor Kevin McMillan said the state got it right by using a centralized Office of Emergency Management to send a unified message to evacuate.

There were two storm-related deaths at the Shore. Two men drowned in Point Pleasant Beach after they walked out on a jetty to watch the pounding surf. Neptune resident Barbara Mancle spent a night in a shelter in Colts Neck. She spoke highly of the evacuation process and her temporary accommodations.

"On a scale from one to 10, I give them a nine and a half," said Mancle, 57.

Spring Lake Mayor Jennifer Naughton said Irene was proof the state should have paid more attention to municipal infrastructure problems. Spring Lake’s Wreck Pond has always been a source of flooding, yet the state does not want to make the necessary — and costly — repairs, she said.

"The return on investment there would be so much higher than the return on investment of helping people clean up" after flooding, Naughton said.

RAHWAY RIVER

Most of Union County escaped the worst of Irene.

Then there was Cranford.

The suburban municipality was expecting some flooding from the Rahway River, but not the torrent that spilled over the town’s dikes and flood-control measures. More than 15 percent of Cranford’s houses were flooded in what the mayor called the worst disaster in the township’s history.

Some residents say Cranford is paying the price for failing to heed warnings that its dikes and flood walls would be inadequate in a major storm.

"The dikes are a little hump," said Carlos Contreras, who lives on Riverside Drive. "It’s ridiculous."

Resident Kristen Wolanski said the township and county made a costly mistake.

"Every time I ask them to raise the dike, the county says no," Wolanski said. "They say it’s too expensive and by raising the dikes in Cranford they’ll flood Rahway."

Township officials noted the evacuation of the area was orderly and no major injuries were reported. Shelters were available for those flooded out of their homes.

Couple enters their Fairfield business for the first time after floodingKevin Kopack just opened his Passaic Ave. physical therapy center a month ago. On Tuesday, he and his wife entered for the first time after the Passaic River crested. With homes and businesses already under immense flood damage, township officials said Fairfield could be under water for another week. (Video by Michael Monday/The Star-Ledger)

The day before the hurricane’s leading edge hit, Christie granted a request from local officials in North Jersey to lower water levels in the area’s reservoirs in hopes that it would lessen flooding in the vast Passaic River basin.

Did it work? Local officials say they don’t know. The Passaic River basin — which includes the Passaic, Pompton, Wanaque and other rivers — experienced some of the worst flooding in the state.

Assemblyman Scott Rumana (R-Passaic) said releasing the reservoir water definitely helped. But flooding from a storm of this size couldn’t be prevented. "Certainly, there was no message it was going to stop the flooding — because it wasn’t," Rumana said.

Some residents said the state didn’t lower the reservoirs enough. "If they had went 6 or 7 feet, it would have helped," said Bryan Papaccioli, who had three feet of water in his Pompton Lakes house. Wayne, Lincoln Park, Little Falls, Fairfield and other river communities all experienced major flooding. In Paterson alone, thousands evacuated and 600 were rescued by boats, officials said.

Robert Lyons, the Passaic County Office of Emergency Management coordinator, said his county will have to reassess how prepared it is for emergencies, including whether his office needs to invest in its own high-water rescue vehicles.

"We have a whole heck of a lot to talk about," Lyons said.

Farther downriver in Newark, Mayor Cory Booker made headlines before the storm when he urged residents to evacuate and warned them to be prepared for up to three days without power. In the end, much of the city was spared. When asked if he overreacted, Booker said, "absolutely not."

"I will always be an advocate of the mantra that it’s better to be prepared for an emergency and not have one than it is to have one and not be prepared," Booker said.

RARITAN RIVER

Everyone expected the Raritan River and its tributaries to flood in Middlesex and Somerset counties in the wake of the hurricane, and they did.

But residents in flood-prone Bound Brook found some good news amid the destruction. A new flood-control system — created after Tropical Storm Floyd battered the area in 1999 — seemed to lessen the flooding. Emergency responders were able to get residents and business owners back to their properties within a few days.

"During Floyd, we had to wait about a week," said Anthony Melendez, inventory manager for Nerger’s Auto Express in Bound Brook.

Before the storm, local officials opened some dams and released water from the Delaware & Raritan Canal to lower the level of the Raritan. But it’s unclear if that helped. Many of the 20 municipalities along the river experienced major flooding. Route 18 in New Brunswick was under water until Tuesday.

In Manville, some residents said they waited days for relief supplies from the Red Cross.

"I’ve been calling them, but I’m still waiting," William Street resident Nancy Trautman said early Wednesday. "And it’s not their fault — they just can’t really get in."

A Red Cross spokeswoman said the storm’s severity delayed the delivery of some food, water and cleanup supplies. The group focused on housing and feeding those in shelters.

"With the magnitude of the disaster, our priority was on safety," said Diane Concannon, spokeswoman for the group’s Central New Jersey chapter.